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Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Review: Rorschach

Look in the picture to the right and ask yourself "what do I see?" Do you see a bird or some kind of winged creature of the night? Perhaps you see your mother in law screaming at a piece of toast that offended her because its jam was the wrong shade of grape. Maybe you see something more simple than that. Maybe you see yourself.

I'll tell you what I see. I see the mark of a painting that has had no identity of its own left to it. When it was created, it was so that others would judge it according to what they thought it looked like. Forever we have been trying to mold it into our image. Such damage has been done to the ink blot's psyche that I doubt it can ever truly believe in itself again.

Can't have been easy, growing up in a world with Mona Lisas and American Gothics. They always knew who they were. Never a doubt in American Gothic's mind that it had some freaky old man with a pitchfork in it. But the humble Rorschach, what does it see when it looks in a mirror? What does the ink blot see in itself?

Nothing.

That's all we've left it with. When the Rorschach tries to see itself for what it is, all it hears is a thousand voices telling it what it should be. An ever changing picture stands before it; continuously morphing from one misguided souls image to the next. All it can do is watch. What other options are left to it? It cannot scream and it cannot complain.

It is a bird, and it is a bat. It's your mother in law, and it's a man standing in a banana shaped suit eating tacos while listening to talk radio. In its nothing it has become everything. And that's enough to drive anyone insane.

(Note:Several points I almost wrote "he" instead of "it" which says something, but who can say what that is.)

I had to do the Rorscach in high school when I started getting therapy. The trick is honesty. Are the subjects being honest? I do not put a lot of stock in the test. I see bats a lot, does that mean I have a thing of Ozzy Osbourne?

My problem was that I always tried to tell the person what I thought they wanted me to see in the picture....

I didn't want to get it wrong....

But eventually I started giving answers like 'I see a California Raisin playing a saxophone, but he's not wearing sunglasses....' Try it.... You'll see them take a second glance at the card every time....